TBT - Christmas Gloating

Gloating.  It's one of my all time favorite Christmas traditions.

Gloating, Christmas 1976

As soon as the first packages arrived under the tree, my sister and I would begin the daily gloating ritual.  We'd start at one end of the living room & lay our presents out, end to end, on the living room floor and see who had the longest pile.  It made no difference who had more gifts, just their size.  Diamond earrings?  An engraved necklace?  The book all the cool kids were reading?  No thank you.  Give us a mop, a toilet plunger, a Chrissy or Velvet doll.  To this day, I'm not sure if I begged and pleaded for Chrissy & Velvet because I wanted the dolls or because they each stood almost three feet tall.  I definitely won the gloating contest the year I got both Chrissy & Velvet, but then came the crushing years when my sister got her own apartment and later got married.  I was at the earrings and nail polish stage of life when my sister was happily receiving mops and vacuum cleaners.

Sadly, I could never force get my own kids interested in gloating.  It may have had something to do with always having very hard hardwood floors....  I wonder if my sister's kids gloat.  I wonder if my great niece and nephew gloat.....  Hmmm, Great Aunt Jeannie just might have something to teach them.